From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 81 invoked from network); 21 May 2004 15:43:31 +0000 Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (156.56.111.197) by parrot.ussg.indiana.edu with SMTP; 21 May 2004 15:43:31 +0000 Received: from parrot.ussg.indiana.edu ([156.56.111.196] helo=parrot.gentoo.org) by smtp.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1BRCBF-0001Ti-Qo for arch-gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org; Fri, 21 May 2004 15:43:29 +0000 Received: (qmail 11224 invoked by uid 89); 21 May 2004 15:43:29 +0000 Mailing-List: contact gentoo-dev-help@gentoo.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-dev@gentoo.org Received: (qmail 3055 invoked from network); 21 May 2004 15:43:29 +0000 X-T2-Posting-ID: +Fzxb8ijMtpvZ+oCWeFeV97fN06SrlYKWbc7nsfdk0I= Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 17:43:27 +0200 From: Tom Payne To: Chris Bainbridge Cc: gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org Message-ID: <20040521154327.GA22524@tompayne.org> Mail-Followup-To: Chris Bainbridge , gentoo-dev@lists.gentoo.org References: <200405201846.37173.cbrewer@stealthaccess.net> <1085145580.8753.93.camel@newkid.milsson.nu> <1085146797.25036.52.camel@localhost> <200405211554.06946.c.j.bainbridge@ed.ac.uk> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <200405211554.06946.c.j.bainbridge@ed.ac.uk> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6i Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] Stuff that makes people mad X-Archives-Salt: 0527f4b0-0e43-471a-9bff-44eb2c94244e X-Archives-Hash: 64e23fa766fd0650f067fc6301567dc1 On Fri, May 21, 2004 at 03:54:06PM +0100, Chris Bainbridge wrote: > On Friday 21 May 2004 14:39, Chris Gianelloni wrote: > > > Can we remove the NEED for a maintainer? > > > > Definitely not. =A0If we were to do something so asinine, we would en= d up > > with packages that are grossly out of date with no hope of them ever > > being updated. =A0There would also be nobody responsible for that ebu= ild, > > so there would be nobody liable if something were to go wrong with it= . > > All in all, it is a very bad idea. >=20 > One of the things that seems to annoy lots of people is this idea that = their=20 > ebuilds are being ignored. I've usually got a bunch (8 at the moment) o= f=20 > ebuilds in bugs.gentoo waiting to be processed.. the oldest is almost a= year=20 > old now. There ought to be some sort of procedure for dealing with user= =20 > submitted ebuilds. I would suggest a system of putting them in ~x86 (or= =20 > whatever) immediately, and if there are no bug reports for x days move = them=20 > to x86.=20 Well, to be honest "good" user-submitted ebuilds tend to have 2-3 bugs in them, and some user-submitted ebuilds are completely broken. Realisticall= y, automatically adding them anywhere is going to cause whole heaps of troub= le. I understand your frustration at not having your ebuilds added, but as ha= s been said many times before it's really due to a shortage of devs. As I d= ev, if I add your ebuild to portage I also implicitly take on a responsibilit= y to maintain it -- version bumps, add features, configs, security fixes, e= tc. To be honest this takes a surprising amount of time. Say a new version co= mes out, you have to: - copy the ebuild to a new one with the new version - download the tarball (might be on a slow link, certainly ties up your internet connection) to generate the digests - unpack the tarball somewhere check the docs (README, ChangeLog) to make sure nothing too drastic has changed - make sure it compiles correctly - make sure it installs correctly - make sure it runs correctly - commit it to CVS, testing ~arch - later, move it to stable arch And this is a simple version bump. Sometimes there are big changes, especially in config files which often need to be patched to be 'gentooized', sometimes other random things change. Altogether, it's quite a lot of work and realistically a dev can sensibly maintain 10-30 ebuilds depending on complexity. There are 6,900 packages = in the tree, so we need 345 devs plus people to work on portage, infrastructure, devrel, GWN, write docs, etc. etc. We're short at the mo. Sorry if this all sounds rather pessimistic, but it's the reality for me.= In the meantime, I would suggest that user collections like breakmygentoo.ne= t are the way forward. > All of this could be easily automated... the idea that every package ne= eds a=20 > maintainer is something that comes from Debian, and is imho unnecessary= . Requiring maintainership does require more manpower, but IMHO is very necessary. Without it we get stale versions, unfixed bugs, unpatched security holes, a veritable quagmire. Also, it acts as a rationalising fo= rce on the number of ebuilds in portage, encouraging portage to contain usefu= l ebuilds. Without it, we'd have everybody's private string library in portage, and their dogs'. > When that developers interests shift (as they=20 > invariably do), updates to the package become ignored, and once again t= he=20 > developer community can do nothing to fix this as the power rests with = the=20 > maintainer. This is alleviated somewhat by the herds system. Also, ebuilds do change maintainership. To speed up the problem we should perhaps have a please_add_my_ebuild@g.o alias in Bugzilla. Users can re-assign their ebuilds to this alias if the= y feel it's not getting enough attention from the developer it was initiall= y assigned to. Other devs can then easily browse the list and take ownershi= p if they choose. This is better than having the bug languish ignored on someone's personal list. Regards, --=20 Tom -- gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list